Hehe, I think the canyons in the picture look better than in-game because there was some time pressure and we just tried to put them in to show them off. But for my taste the lighting does not show the canyons in the best light, so there's a lot to do and tweak regarding the lighting. But I'm very excited that we always manage to improve ourselves and learn a lot in the process. With tweaks in positioning the canyons and lighting they will really look great.

I don't know how many of you tried a Kickstarter campaign already but it's nearly killing us. Videos should be of such high quality in order not to make a sleepy impression and it needs to show one highlight after another. At least the videos we liked were pretty well thought through. I'm not talking about industry veterans who merely show up and immediately get millions. But what do people of whom I haven't yet heard show to catch my interest. Of course, the normal production process should not stop either, resulting in double shifts for me and Julian. Not to mention all the stuff you need to polish and build into the game to make it shine. Well, at some point I'm sure we'll be able to write up a very nice post-mortem, too. Be it of a success or a failure, we'll see. Currently we do everything we can to hopefully turn it into a success, hehe. Wish us luck.

What else happened.

We're experimenting with the camera's focal length to convey the vastness of the desert.

We created and implemented another rough jump animation.

There are now killer vegetables in the game. Carrots are what Sarahul's nightmares are about.

Lols aside, the vegetables are for a farm area at The Edge. People have to eat something.

Alex finished the blockout of the "Mirror Room" in the wind temple and Julian programmed the logic. Time to test, model and integrate assets.

Daniel created concepts for the Mirror Room.

We're preparing our Kickstarter campaign and we're shooting a ton of in-game and real world video. In this dev diary, you can see some of the bloopers

New terraforming up and down visual effect. It conveys the upwards/downwards movement better.

New visual indicator when absorbing fire or wind elements (the fire fairies are gone now).

Sarahul with armor work now, too. No more ridiculous forward leaning.

When enemies die, they don't just disappear, but disintegrate in a sandy fashion.

Kickstarter was pushed back to April 24th (if it works out this time)...

We got some pretty amazing Kickstarter reward illustrations back from our new illustrator. We love them, and they look good on our Kickstarter test page (you'll have to wait to see these).

Another outtake from our Kickstarter in-game shooting. In one game situation, Daniel managed to kill his colleagues Alex and Bernd with a single shot. Pwned.

We should have guessed it. Our Kickstarter campaign will be delayed by one week. It's now scheduled for April 24th. It's tax time in the US and it takes a looong time apparently to get the employer ID number and a bank account. Also, the verification payment from Amazon Payments to the account can take up to 7 days (this is what we're now waiting for). We started preparing this for a long time and now every little step takes a week. Devil is in the details...

Beside all the stress, yet excitement for the coming Kickstarter campaign, the production team continues implementing things into our daily builds. This is what happened this week.

Improved character animation controller: Animations now have shorter transition times and the character reacts more quickly to input changes.

Work on the fire burst visual effect. Experimentation with different types of flames.

Fire burst and wind push can now be cast up- and downwards. This is useful in up- and downhill battles. Previously, these spells could only be cast on the same horizontal axis the player was on, making up- and downhill battles impossible.

New fire enhancement visual effect.

New wind push visual effect.

Sarahul with bows now got a bow shooting animation. But we need to put the bow into the other hand. Last minute features always suffer from bugs...

I take an arrow to the ... behind.

Not exactly a feature, more of a byproduct. The Sarahul dispenser at work.

Julian takes a nap while I bring you weekly updates.

3 DAYS to our Kickstarter campaign! We are still praying as some account verification process seems to still be ongoing. How long does that stuff take! Arghhh. Our nerves...

For mocap you might be able to just find a school in the area that has a mocap setup and ask to use that... or possibly rent one... though I have no idea what that costs.

The best thing would be to also get someone who is agile enough to do some good fluid movements... not just a guy who sits at a desk all day or something. :p

Overall the game looks pretty cool but I agree that it feels dated. I think adding all the discussed details would definitely help... but getting some really good character animation is going to go a long way also.